Preparation of alkaline solid polymer electrolyte based on PVA-TiO2-KOH-H2O and its performance in Zn-Ni battery

A novel composite alkaline polymer electrolyte based on poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) polymer matrix, titanium dioxide (TiO₂) ceramic fillers, KOH, and H₂O was prepared by a solution casting method. The properties of PVA-TiO₂-KOH alkaline polymer electrolyte films were studied by X-ray diffraction (XRD), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and AC impedance techniques. DSC and XRD results showed that the domain of amorphous region in the PVA polymer matrix augmented when TiO₂ filler was added. The SEM result showed that TiO₂ particles dispersed into the PVA matrix although some TiO₂ aggregates of several micrometers were formed. The alkaline polymer electrolyte showed excellent electrochemical properties. The room temperature (20 °C) ionic conductivity values of typical samples were between 0.102 and 0.171 S cm⁻¹. The Zn-Ni secondary battery with the alkaline polymer electrolyte PVA-TiO₂-KOH had excellent electrochemical property at the low charge-discharge rate.     

A high isolation W-band MMIC drain type cascode single balanced mixer

We present a high isolation W-band MMIC drain type cascode single balanced mixer of high LO-to-RF isolation and wide band with conversion characteristic using the high directivity monolithic tandem couplers and 0.1 μm GaAs-based metamorphic high electron mobility transistors (MHEMTs). The fabricated mixer consists of two cascode MHEMT mixers and two tandem couplers using the air-bridge crossovers. We establish a drain type cascode mixer structure where the LO signal is applied to the drain port in the mixing component of common source MHEMT circuit. The tandem coupler exhibits good couplings (2.92-3.8 dB), low return losses (−32.7 dB), and isolations (15.4-39.2 dB) in a wide bandwidth of 75-110 GHz. The mixer shows a conversion loss of 9.8 dB at 94 GHz, an output P1dB of −14.8 dBm at LO frequency of 94.542 GHz, and LO-to-RF isolations of 29.5-39.5 dB at 94-100 GHz.     

Characteristics and properties of metal aluminum thin film prepared by electron cyclotron resonance plasma-assisted atomic layer deposition technology

Metal aluminum (Al) thin films are prepared by 2450-MHz electron cyclotron resonance plasma-assisted atomic layer deposition on glass and p-Si substrates using trimethylaluminum as the precursor and hydrogen as the reductive gas. We focus our attention on the plasma source for thin-film preparation and annealing of as-deposited films related to the surface square resistivity. The square resistivity of as-deposited Al film is greatly reduced after annealing and almost reaches the value of bulk metal. Through chemical and structure analysis we conclude that the square resistivity is determined by neither contaminant concentration nor surface morphology, but by both crystallinity and crystal size in this process.     

Antiferromagnetic interactions in Er-doped SnO<Subscript>2</Subscript> DMS nanoparticles

Diluted magnetic semiconductor (DMS) nanoparticles of Sn_1−x Er _x O₂ (x = 0.0, 0.02, 0.04, and 0.1) were prepared by sol–gel method. The X-ray diffraction patterns showed SnO₂ rutile structure for all samples with no impurity peaks. The decrease in crystallite size with Er concentration was confirmed from TEM measurements (from 12 to 4 nm). The UV–Visible absorption spectra of Er-doped SnO₂ nanoparticles showed blue shift in band gap compared to undoped SnO₂. The electron spin resonance analysis of Er-doped SnO₂ nanoparticles indicate Er³⁺ in a rutile lattice and also decrease in intensity with Er concentration above x = 0.02. Temperature-dependent magnetization studies and the inverse susceptibility curves indicated increased antiferromagnetic interaction with Er concentration.     

Evaluation of the dosimetric characteristics of a radiophotoluminescent glass dosimeter for high-energy photon and electron beams in the field of radiotherapy

We aimed to evaluate the suitability of a glass dosimeter (GD) for high-energy photon and electron beams in experimental and clinical use, especially for radiation therapy. We examined the expanded dosimetric characteristics of GDs including dose linearity up to 500 Gy, uniformity among GD lots and for individual GDs, the angular dependence, and energy dependence of 4 therapeutic x-ray qualities. In addition, we measured the dosimetric features (dose linearity, uniformity, angular dependence, and energy dependence) of the GD for electron beams of 10 different electron energy qualities. All measurements with the exception of dose linearity for photon beam were performed in a water phantom. For high-energy photon beams, dose linearity has a linear relationship for a dose ranging from 1 to 500 Gy with the coefficient of determination; R² of 0.998. The uniformity of each GD of dose measurements was within ±0.5% for four GD lots and within ±1.2% for 80 GDs. In terms of the effects of photon beam angle, lower absorbed doses of within 1.0% were observed between 60° and 105° than at 90°. The GD energy dependence of 4 photon beam energy qualities was within ±2.0%. On the other hand, the result of the dose linearity for high-energy electron beams showed well fitted regression line with the coefficient of determination; R² of 0.999 between 6 and 20 MeV. The uniformity of GDs exposed to the nominal electron energies 6, 9, 12, 16, and 20 MeV was ±1.2%. In terms of the angular dependence to electron beams, absorbed doses were within 2.0% between 60° and 105° than at 90°. In evaluation of the energy dependence of the GD at nominal electron energies between 5 and 20 MeV, we obtained responses between 1.1% and 3.5% lower than that for a cobalt-60 beam. Our results show that GDs can be used as a detector for determining doses when a high-energy photon beam is used, and that it also has considerable potential for dose measurement of high-energy electron beam.     

Ultrawidely tunable single-mode fiber acousto-optic filter

A single-mode fiber (SMF) acousto-optic tunable filter (AOTF) with a tuning range of more than 300 nm is demonstrated. The SMF used in the experiment has a ring of symmetric holes within the cladding, which causes a larger mode-index difference between the first and the second higher-order antisymmetric modes than those of a conventional SMF. As a result, the difference in beatlengths between the core mode and the higher-order modes is highly increased, which makes it possible for the SMF AOTF to exhibit a single resonance peak in the transmission spectrum over the wavelength range of 1.3-1.6 μm for given acoustic frequencies of 3.1-3.8 MHz.     

Anilinolysis of O‐butyl phenyl phosphonochloridothioate in acetonitrile: Synthesis,characterization, kinetic study,and reaction mechanism

This paper describes a simple optimized method for the synthesis of O‐butyl phenyl phosphonochloridothioate ( 4 ) under mild conditions. The target compounds were characterized by ¹H‐nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), ¹³C‐NMR, and ³¹P‐NMR spectroscopy, as well as mass spectroscopy. The apparent structure of 4 was confirmed by optimization using the B3LYP/6‐311 + G(d,p) level in the Gaussian 09 program in acetonitrile. The nucleophilic substitution reactions of 4 with X‐anilines (XC₆H₄NH₂) and deuterated X‐anilines (XC₆H₄ND₂) were investigated kinetically in acetonitrile at 55.0°C. The free energy relationship with X in the anilines looked biphasic concave upwards with a break region between X = H and X = 3‐MeO, giving large negative ρ_X and small positive β_X values. The deuterium kinetic isotope effects were secondary inverse (k_H/k_D < 1: 0.789‐0.995) and the magnitudes, (k_H/k_D), increased when the nucleophiles were changed from weakly basic to strongly basic anilines. A concerted S_N2 mechanism is proposed on the basis of the selectivity parameters and the variation trend of the deuterium kinetic isotope effects with X.     

Sparse non-negative matrix factorizations for ultrasound factor analysis

Factor analysis is a powerful tool used for the analysis of dynamic studies. One of the major drawbacks of Factor Analysis of Dynamic Structures (FADS) is that the solution is not mathematically unique when only non-negativity constraints are used to determine factors and factor coefficients. In this paper, we introduce a novel method to correct FADS solutions by constructing and minimizing a new objective function. The method is improved from non-negative matrix factorizations (NMFs) algorithm by adding a sparse constraint that penalizes multiple components in the images of the factor coefficients. The technique is tested on computer simulations, and a patient ultrasound liver study. The results show that the method works well in comparison to the truth in computer simulations and to region of interest (ROI) measurements in the experimental studies.     

Semiconductor quantum dots in high magnetic fields

We review and extend the composite fermion theory for semiconductor quantum dots in high magnetic fields. The mean-field model of composite fermions is unsatisfactory for the qualitative physics at high angular momenta. Extensive numerical calculations demonstrate that the microscopic CF theory, which incorporates interactions between composite fermions, provides an excellent qualitative and quantitative account of the quantum dot ground state down to the largest angular momenta studied, and allows systematic improvements by inclusion of mixing between composite fermion Landau levels (called Λ levels).     

Semi-supervised Discriminant Analysis and Sparse Representation-based self-training for Face Recognition

In this paper, we consider the problem of automatic face recognition with limited manually labeled training data. We propose a new semi-supervised self-training approach which is used to automatically augment the manually labeled training set with new unlabeled data. Semi-supervised Discriminant Analysis is used in each iteration of self-training for discriminative dimensionality reduction by making use of both labeled and unlabeled training data. Sparse representation is applied for classification. Experimental results on four independent databases show that our algorithm outperforms other face recognition methods under 3 different configurations, namely transductive, semi-supervised and single training image.